


A Fragile Heart

by Jade



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Blood, Character Death, Consensual Violence, F/M, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 11:22:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade/pseuds/Jade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was his heart -- dead and broken -- only his body had yet to realize.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fragile Heart

Blood. 

There had been so much blood.

They had taken shelter in a hunter’s cabin for the night, still two days away from the nearest Bifrost site. Sif had gone into labour earlier than expected. Even isolated as they were, neither of them had been particularly concerned. Women had been giving birth without healers for time unknowing. And Loki had trained with Eir to learn what he could about pregnancy and birth not long after Sif told him they were expecting. 

So Loki had rubbed at the small of her back, paced with her when she felt the need to walk, timed the length between contractions and their durations. There wasn’t much more he could do while they waited. He couldn’t travel with anyone between the worlds without the journey damaging his passenger and seriously taxing himself. And the Bifrost site was still too far away to be of any help. 

It was when Sif’s water finally broke in a sudden wash of blood that they grew concerned.

Loki tried to bury his concern. But Sif didn’t need to see his worry to know that something was wrong. She could feel it as surely as Loki could see it. 

And the bleeding didn’t stop. It didn’t slow. 

By the time they realized that something more was wrong, Loki’s hands were slick and sticky from blood and amniotic fluids and Sif was pale and weak from pain and blood loss. All he had been able to feel through the spongy matter blocking the way was their child’s spine. Even dazed from the difficult labour, Loki could see the understanding reflect in Sif’s gaze.

“Do it,” she told him. She was short of breath even between contractions, but there was a firmness to her words, a certainty in her eyes. “The choice is between both of us or me. Do it, Loki. You cannot save us both, so save our child. Do it.”

She was right. The choice came down to losing both Sif and the babe when she eventually bled out and her heart stopped, or cutting their child from her body to save it and letting Sif pass on. If they had still be in Asgard, Eir could have saved them both. Even Midgard’s poor excuses for healers could have saved Sif. But stuck in a cabin too far from the Bifrost landing or a city proper with only Loki as an attendant and Sif’s life was forfeit. 

So he did it. He gave her something to bite down on as he took up a knife and bid her to remain still. Fresh blood rushed as he slit her belly. Loki had to block it out, had to block the sounds of Sif’s screams around her gag, ignore the way her head thrashed. If he stopped, if he paused for even a single beat of his heart, he wouldn’t be able to start again. He would lose them both and he knew Sif would never forgive him if just let them both die because he couldn’t stand to see her in such agony. 

He swallowed back his need to be sick. His blades had always had a very sharp edge, her flesh and muscle parting easily. He forced the incision to open wider as gently as he could, reaching deeper into Sif’s body to carefully cut his way into her womb and pull their child from her body. 

She clawed at the blood soaked bedding after Loki set aside his knife and reached into her body. Reached into the gaping wound in her belly and forced his hands into her womb to tug the child they had made together free of her body. 

Such a tiny thing, fitting easily into his hands. The little being that had kicked against Loki’s palm when he would speak to the rounded swell of her belly. 

“What--”

“A boy,” Loki answered. There were tears blurring his vision when he met Sif’s eyes. The pride in them, the joy and the love. And then Sif died with a soft sigh -- trauma and blood loss taking their toll.

And kneeling on their blood soaked bed, Loki looked down to his son. The tiny body with the fragile bones that continued to break even under his gentlest touch. His son who had died in the womb, his little body crushed and broken from the force of the contractions. Loki had told him stories, sung him cradle songs, when he had been restless to soothe him back to sleep when his movements kept Sif awake. How often had Loki pressed his hands to Sif’s belly to feel the babe -- his son -- kick or punch in greeting? How many times had the very actions he had craved broken his son’s bones? 

Loki tied and cut the umbilical cord and wrapped his son’s body in the swaddling blanket they had purchased on their trip. “Ullr,” he said, brushing his lips in a feather light kiss on his son’s forehead. Pulling the blankets up over the ruin of Sif’s lower body, Loki laid his dead son next to his dead mother and crawled into the bed with them. 

Reaching over to close Sif’s eyes, Loki resolved to die with them.

He would see them home first. 

He would see them returned to Asgard. See his son named and acknowledged even in death. And then he would see their bodies prepared and wrapped in their funeral shrouds. He would carry them through the city on their litter to the water’s edge and place them on their funeral pyre. And then he would lay down next to them, he would touch her cheek and kiss her lips one last time through the gauzy shroud. He would lay his hand on his son’s head and press a kiss to his crown and then he would hold them.

He would hold them both and travel with them into the afterlife. 

The two pieces of his heart were dead and broken. The Norns may as well have all of him all at once.

**Author's Note:**

> [Placenta Previa](http://www.babycenter.com/0_placenta-previa_830.bc)
> 
> [Osteogenesis Imperfecta](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002540/) (There has been an actual case where the above mentioned extreme was a possibility. It resulted in a third trimester abortion here in Canada).


End file.
